5 shockingly violent back stories to everyday traditions

quote:#5. Handshakes Were to Check for Murder Weapons -Where It Actually Comes From: Handshakes are a relic of an era when everyone was a paranoid wreck expecting to be murdered to death by anyone and everyone they saw ... maybe even more so than nowadays. You see, in the distant past, extending an empty hand was more than a friendly gesture -- it was an indication that a person wasn't holding some sort of sharp rock/knife/wrist-mounted miniature catapult about to be used against you. As history progressed, the practice became more and more complicated to address increasing fears: When ancient Romans got together, for example, they latched onto each other's arms clear up to the elbow to feel for daggers hidden up sleeves.

Surprisingly ineffective against T-1000s though

quote:#4. Driving on the Right (or Left) Comes from Being Able to Conveniently Murder People -Where It Actually Comes From: Going all the way back to ancient Rome, inventor of everything, traffic generally stayed to the left. The reason? You never knew what type of sketchy passersby you might run into along the way, and since people lacking mutant superpowers tend to be right-handed, traveling to the left allowed them ample head-cleaving room.

with the introduction of firearms, it no longer made sense for right-handed people to stay to the left, because you'd have to pull some seriously sexy contortions to aim your even sexier arquebus at someone passing you. So instead, travelers kept their guns tucked into their left arms and traveled to the right, thereby being better prepared to fire at someone passing on their left.

Still ineffective when you try to hold your blunderbuss sideways.

quote:#2. The Age of Adulthood Was Determined by When You Could Wear a Suit of Armor -Where It Actually Comes From: But why 21? Is it because that's when your body suddenly transmogrifies from a Lord of the Flies-style savage into an alcohol-metabolizing responsibility machine? Nope, the reason you're finally allowed to order a beer is because, a thousand years ago, that was the age at which you could finally become a maiden-savin' knight.

quote:Back then, the wedding guests would jostle the new couple to the bedroom directly after the ceremony for a sort of crowdsourced consummation. Snatching part of the bride's dress on the way to this live porn show was considered good luck, so naturally the gown would be reduced to rags. As a result, brides eventually began tossing the garter for the guests to fight over while she and her new husband escaped to the bedroom.

Some weird fricks back then, can you imagine parents watching your kids frick for the first time? Holy jeez

quote:#3. Covering a Yawn and Saying "God Bless You" After a Sneeze Were to Stave Off a Horrific Death

The Traditions You Know:

At some point in human history, it became important for us to be overly concerned with the air intake of other humans. Think about it: When you yawn (which, having just read the word "yawn," you have an overwhelming urge to do right now), you feel irresistibly compelled to cover your mouth, because ever since you were a kid your mom told you that fully exposing your taco tunnel to everyone around you was just not a proper thing to do. And when the goo-flecked air is traveling in the opposite direction in the form of a sneeze, our instinctual reaction is to utter the phrase "God bless you" -- unless said sneeze happens to be aimed directly at your face, to which the societally accepted reaction is to administer a severe beating with the nearest rusty pipe.

quote:#2. The Age of Adulthood Was Determined by When You Could Wear a Suit of Armor -Where It Actually Comes From: But why 21? Is it because that's when your body suddenly transmogrifies from a Lord of the Flies-style savage into an alcohol-metabolizing responsibility machine? Nope, the reason you're finally allowed to order a beer is because, a thousand years ago, that was the age at which you could finally become a maiden-savin' knight.

I'll go ahead and call bull shite on this one since the legal drinking age in most european countries (where you would have been a knight) is not 21.

quote:Back in the Middle Ages, warfare pretty much followed an "I stronger, you deader" philosophy, so the most elite units were heavily armored knights. And since clothes made entirely of metal tend to weigh a dragon-sized shit-ton, it was believed that only someone who had reached their 21st birthday could effectively carry that weight. Plus, the age of 21 was extra special because, based on some Aristotelian Greek bullshite, they thought that 7 was a divine number. Therefore, according to the Official Knight Users Manual, boys could become pages at 7, squires at 14, and knights at 21.

As you may or may not have heard, we 'mericans were once British colonials, so this perceived importance of the age of 21 eventually filtered on down to us. So the next time someone you know turns 21, don't buy them a beer. Instead, slap some armor on them, strap them onto a horse, and send them off to fight some Lannisters ... or, seeing as how that's probably illegal wherever you live, just tell them that they had to wait until they turned 21 to consume alcohol because a medieval English common law said they were too much of a pussy to wear a suit of armor before that.